Catholic Conference of Kentucky

Fr. Ron Ketteler

As Congress and the Administration struggle to come up with a compromise on unemployment benefits and payroll taxes, now is a good time to reflect on the what the failure to act means for the thousands of persons in this country out of work and facing hard futures. In a series of three articles, Fr. Ron Ketteler, a theology professor at St. Thomas More College in northern Kentucky, has written about some critical issues facing labor today. In one he refers to this year’s Labor Day Statement:

On September 5, 2011, Bishop Stephen Blaire, the chairman of that committee, issued the 2011 Labor Day Statement — “Human Cost and Moral Challenges of a Broken Economy”

“Human Costs and Moral Challenges of a Broken Economy” stands as a call for “reflection and action on current economic turmoil and hardships experienced by workers and their families.”

Bishop Blaire sums up the tragedies and its ensuing toll on men and women stemming from the current economic crisis: “This Labor Day, the economic factors are stark and the human costs are real: millions of our sisters and brothers are without work, raising children in poverty and haunted by fears about their economic security.”

These three articles are now available on the site:

Labor Day in the New Millennium: ‘The globalization of solidarity’ … Blessed John Paul II, Part 1
The Rights of Labor in the New Millennium: the ‘great work-bench’ of humanity … John Paul II, Part 2
Labor Rights in the New Millennium:‘the priority of labor over capital’, Part 3

Rev. Ronald M. Ketteler, a priest of the Diocese of Covington, is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Theology at St. Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, Ky. He is also a member of the Ecumenical, Health Care, and Prolife Committees of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky.